On July 6, 2018, the United States began imposing 25 percent tariffs on the first $34 billion worth of Chinese goods, marking the official start of the trade war between the world's two largest economies in the 21st century. On September 24 of the same year, the United States imposed a 10 percent tariff on about $200 billion of Chinese imports. The tax was raised to 25 per cent on May 10. The United States is threatening to impose a 25 percent tariff on about $300 billion worth of Chinese imports at the end of the public hearings on June 24. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the United States could reap more than $100 billion in additional tariffs from U.S. trade with China each year, buying large quantities of agricultural products from American farmers and sending them to poor and hungry countries in humanitarian aid.
Since April 16, 2018, when the us department of commerce announced that "zte will be banned from purchasing sensitive products from us companies for the next seven years", sino-us economic and trade disputes have continued.
Mr Trump has pursued his policies quite forcefully around the world, as if he were expanding his empire in fits and starts. Behind the "retreat at a word" is an attempt by the United States to gain greater freedom of movement in order to achieve real expansion. So today's talk of American decline is not true. The United States is not declining. It is declining as a global power. The United States, as an ordinary empire, is still strong, and just beginning to show it.
"Whether or not the United States views itself as an empire, to many foreigners the United States increasingly looks like one. They also treat Washington as an empire. On either side, there is a real "empire-building" of the United States.
In a matter of months, the us has started a trade war with China, Europe, Australia and many other economies -- and the competitive pressures of the rise of other countries are not easy for the us. But unlike Mr. Trump's international opposition, his domestic support has steadily grown.
In the past decades, the United States has shown more hegemony and achieved the development of the world economy by maintaining the basic order of economic globalization.
The United States was the most successful global hegemon in world history. Mr Trump is stepping back from that position: from the proposed TPP, from UNESCO, from the human rights commission and now, most likely, from the WTO. To withdraw is not to retreat, but to attack. In essence, the gradual transformation of the us from global hegemony to an ordinary empire will cost the world, and the world is likely to fall apart and reintegrate in the process.
What's the difference between empire and hegemony? In fact, from the internal organizational form, there is no difference, both are political and military unity and economic and cultural diversity coexist in a form of political governance. However, from an external perspective, empires are entirely for their own interests, while hegemony is both for the global public good. For more than a decade after 9/11, the United States was torn between hegemony and empire until trump came to power.
Franz schulman, a professor at the university of California, Berkeley, has written an interesting article, "like ancient Rome, America is moving from republic to empire."Even if the United States changes from a democratic country and global hegemony to an ordinary empire, it will not suddenly dissipate its domestic support, will not affect its national strength, and will even ease its international burden and facilitate its expansion.
Just two months after the invasion of Iraq, Joseph nye, then dean of Harvard University's Kennedy school of government, wrote in foreign affairs that "respected analysts, left and right, have begun to make the American empire the dominant narrative of the 21st century."
The principle that economic globalization promotes economic growth is very simple: the market allocates resources on a global scale, maximizes the efficiency of resource utilization, and thus achieves pareto optimality on a global scale. In practice it will manifest itself as the universal development of the world economy. In the existing economic structure, the United States, as a hegemonic power, can achieve excess profits by monopolizing currencies, financial institutions, bulk commodities, trade rules and new and high technologies. This can be seen as the dividend of hegemony in the defence of economic globalisation. America became the ideal country for immigrants from all over the world. At home, americans have access to cultures and people from all over the world. We have spared no effort to promote globalization, which has not only turned the world into America's world, but also turned the United States into the world's America.
(Picture Source:Baidu)
When the domestic contradictions of the United States were replaced by the contradictions between the United States and the world, the overall social orientation of the United States began to change significantly. The United States is a democratic country, trump's election is enough to show that this political orientation exists!
